Face­book woos ve­hi­cle mak­ers

FACE­BOOK’S chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Sh­eryl Sand­berg, went on a charm of­fen­sive in Ger­many yes­ter­day, telling the coun­try’s pow­er­ful ve­hi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers that the world’s big­gest so­cial net­work does not want to com­pete with them. “I come with very good news. We’re the only com­pany in Sil­i­con Val­ley that’s not build­ing a car,” Sand­berg said to laugh­ter and ap­plause at the opening cer­e­mony of the Frank­furt mo­tor show, where she met Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel.

Face­book is spon­sor­ing a “new mobility world” at the Frank­furt show that brings to­gether car mak­ers, tech com­pa­nies and start-ups in ar­eas such as au­ton­o­mous driv­ing and elec­tric cars. Ger­many has in­tro­duced fines of up to ß50-mil­lion (R782-mil­lion) for so­cial me­dia net­works if they fail to re­move hate­ful post­ings promptly.

On Wed­nes­day, Face­book tight­ened its rules on who can make money from ad­ver­tis­ing on its net­work to make it harder for providers of fake news and sen­sa­tional head­lines to cash in. It also said it would step up its mon­i­tor­ing of hate speech.

Sand­berg said they would join an ur­ban mobility test project in Mu­nich and also spon­sor a new univer­sity in Ber­lin fo­cused on dig­i­tal prod­uct de­vel­op­ment.